


The Reason

by ApatheticByDefault



Category: Shameless (TV), Shameless (US)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-15
Updated: 2013-04-15
Packaged: 2017-12-08 13:15:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/761737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ApatheticByDefault/pseuds/ApatheticByDefault
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Less than a year later, Ian comes back. He doesn't tell Mickey, doesn't go to see him. It's by chance that Mickey even knows he's alive. And he seems a little different to Mickey, slightly bigger, if that's even possible. But a part of Mickey kinda likes the new Ian. Even if there's a lot less of him that he might be allowed to see.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Reason

**Author's Note:**

> Set after the finale of the third season. Please comment or give me any mean of feedback.

 

 

Mickey doesn't know where Mandy is, but that's not to say he cares that she's been gone longer than it takes to grab a carton of eggs and some milk from the local grocer. 

It's not to say he's worried either, because he knows Mandy can take care of herself on her own. If anything, probably better than he could on any good day.

She definitely knows her way around the area, and she's not nearly as dense as people expect her to be.

She knows they don't live in the safest neighbourhood, hell, even the safest state, and Mickey feels a little better knowing she's smart about it, never leaving the house without something to back her up.

(If she should be messed with at all. People don't usually mess with their family.)

So, when he starts to fidget, it might just be an excuse to step out of the house and away from the man sleeping before him on the lint-infested couch, with his face turned in and stuffed against the edge of it. 

The buzz of snoring against the course material doesn't remind him of everything he's done to hurt his family. But it does remind him that he's still alive and breathing.

And that's enough to get Mickey to stuff a pair of keys into his jean pocket before exiting hastily, because he's already thinking about killing the guy in his slumber.

And when the thoughts of edging closer to him with a dull blade in his hand brush through his mind, he closes the door behind him with an audible click.

He walks a bit slowly at first, trudging behind a couple of youths marking their way back further into the alleys.

They're rampaging up and down, stopping and pausing every little while to push and shove at each other, until Mickey is nearly toppling over them.

They're pretty short still, and he can remember being around that age. 

Anyway, they race off when they can clearly see that Mickey towers over them (not exactly even being the tallest of the tall), scrambling to not scrape their skinny little arms in their mad dash through the nearest alleyway.

Mickey's first thought is that Mandy went shopping, or swindling, as it is most commonly referred to in the southside, but that thought soon escapes him when he realises he's been walking up and down the ritzier streets and still has yet to have seen her.

The second thought he has doesn't last quite as long as the first, and is more instinctual than not.

Still, it's not too much to think that Mickey would end up walking back down a more upright street in his neighbourhood, past a familiar house that he's rarely ever stepped into.

Mickey would be lying if he said he hadn't already walked past it this month, this past week even.

Sometimes, if Mickey stares at just the right angle, with the appearance that the doors are shut and the windows are too, he can pretend there's a certain person still lurking about in there. Even if Mickey knows and thinks otherwise.

He doesn't think about it, he's just used to it. He doesn't need to roll the thoughts of Ian over in his head endlessly to get up the nerve to stomp on by. He's already done that. He walks by every little while when the nerves in his stomach get a little crazy.

But, even more often than not, he does it when he finds he's having trouble feeling anything at all.

This time, he doesn't honestly have an answer as to where he's going, if anyone he comes into contact with feels inclined to ask.

He usually doesn't. Not really. But, at the very least, he would have concocted some sort of a story that would explain why he's walking so dangerously close to a building that houses multiple Gallaghers.

Luckily enough for him though, he's never walked into Ian, and he doesn't really have any reason to. Not anymore.

A part of Mickey doesn't really think he's all that lucky.

When he rounds the corner, he shields his eye from the harsh glare of the sun that's just beginning to loom over the exterior of the houses lining the block.

When he draws close to the house he's trying hard not to think about, close enough so that someone could come rushing out the front door at any moment to offer him an inquisition, he hears the sound of feet shuffling across the lawn, presumably in baggy pants and an even baggier hoody (if his vision is anything to go by when he whips his head around).

It's like they're both in a trance, and he's not the only one who stops right in his tracks.

It's all laid out fairly simply. 

Mickey is standing there alone, and the setting certainly matches everything he's feeling. It's calm but eery. Bright, just not vivid. The sky is bright in blues and gradients of white fading cerulean, but if you turn your head at just the right angle, you'll only see the soft yellows. 

Faint, almost not. Just a reflection of the sunlight cutting through the clouds and directing itself onto the tall house towering above him.

Mickey thinks of white crystal-like specks of brick blaring in the sunlight, hard to look at in the summertime.

And that makes him think that it's summer now. And it's not just _not cold_ —it's warm. It's not barren outside. It's not shiver-inducing like the day Ian left.

And it's accompanied by a feeling of warmth rising up in his chest.

Mickey doesn't believe it when he sees the bright red nearing him. Leaning down and stopping to pick up the recently tossed paper situated on the lawn before him. No, not until the light hits at just the right angle and he can see his eyes aren't quite tricking him yet.

He doesn't realise it, doesn't even feel it when a smile etches obviously along the corners of his mouth, not even when the girl passing him by on the sidewalk is giving him quizzical glances and trying to follow his gaze to the boy standing long metres across from him. The rest of his body has already started to go knumb, but he doesn't notice that either.

She moves by in a split moment's notice though, even if it's not like Mickey cares to notice.

"I knew you'd come back," Mickey says, his words slurred, loud but whisper-like, stepping forward and subconciously reaching his hand out to Ian's.  

He doesn't realize that Ian's already stepping back, drifting further from him in more than one way, until he feels him rip his hand away at the motion.

The feeling returns to his body, and it's more than just the brush of air against his fingertips that has a chill run up through his stomach and to his chest. Everything is overly sensitised now, and he can feel the swift rush of air fitting to form with his fingers where Ian's should have been, even without thinking to.

It's not even cold outside.

"No, you didn't." He says. The emotion he'd like to see isn't there, there isn't much emotion there at all, really, but he's never felt more like someone might be willing to hurt him if they got the chance.

Words catch in his throat when the light shines brightly on Ian's face as he marches back up the stairs. "Is that a scar above your eye?" He lets himself say it, takes it for what it is. 

Because he and Ian always saw so little of each other, even in their prime. That left even less to hope for now.

Ian swivels just as quickly back around to snap, "it'll heal soon." His hand grips around the banister, and the paper slides down in his palm where the grip on it has switched with the grip on the railing. He doesn't drop it though, just snatches at the flustered sheets sticking out of it in a bevy of directions.

And, yeah, maybe it all will. And maybe Ian kinda thinks that too, because he doesn't seem nervous, and Mickey knows he isn't.

And before Ian is back up to the stairs, back into the mocking field of the house (where he must be alone, because there isn't anyone who's come out to scream profanities at him yet), "I'm not really asking for it to." He musters the courage to utter the words, and he's surprised that his voice is so strong and sturdy, even as his heart begins to drum more rapidly in his chest.

Ian pauses, but it's for only a second that he stops to tense for Mickey's next words.

"You still look great."

Ian slams the door behind him. 

Mickey stays there for a few moments.

He's not waiting for Ian to open the arm and jump into his arms, but he's waiting to progress it, the early flashbacks and images of Ian's expression, what it all means, loading into his head so that he can relive them.

_"You still look great."_ And it's true. He does.

It surprises Mickey still that Ian just keeps getting better the longer he knows him. He doesn't think about how it's because he grows to find him better everyday, just as quickly as Ian changes like the seasons. He already knows that much.

The only problem with that now is that he might not get the chance to see that gradual shift in the atmosphere anymore, if things keep going the way that they are going.

He trails behind a slowly traveling car back to his house, pausing with it at every stop sign, just staring at it with it's lightly coated rims and tinted windows.

It gives him a sense of direction, he tracks it fluidly, until it eventually switches paths and makes a left down away from the plethora of houses littering the region. And he's back to square one.

It's only when he's back infront of his doorstep that he realizes he forgot to ask where Mandy was.

He must have gotten too distracted.

Opening the door though, he can see Mandy bustling about in the kitchen, like she'd just gotten back from the store, and she'd only shopped.

Their dad is not anywhere to be seen by either of their wandering eyes.

"Where were you?" She asks him.

Mickey could ask her the same question. 

He doesn't though, just grunts an unintelligible monosyllable under his breath before reverting back into his bedroom.


End file.
